Free online services like Google can come with a cost

Internet companies such as Google gather and store mountains of data about their users

A Google employee works on a laptop before the start of a conference in June. The company has been mining users’ online information to target them with advertising for years.

Photograph by: Justin Sullivan
, Getty Images

The proposed class-action lawsuit filed on Thursday against Google in B.C. Supreme Court is only the latest salvo in a continuing war that is pitting online consumers against the giant companies that profit from users’ personal information.

Earlier this year, a B.C. woman launched a court action against Facebook for using her name and photo on that social network site’s “sponsored stories” — ads that show up on friends’ Facebook pages when she hit the “like” button’ for a product or service.

It wasn’t the first case against Facebook by users incensed at how the networking giant was using their information. And Google already faces a lawsuit in California similar to the action taken in B.C. over data mining of its users’ information.

At the heart of these court fights is the business models of Google, Facebook and other Internet companies that offer consumers a host of so-called free services.

They are essentially advertising companies, for whom data-mining is their stock-in-trade. Their customers turn over mountains of personal data in exchange for receiving a service — whether it’s the ability to email friends, post photos, or keep a calendar.

“On the one hand, you can look at it from the point of an ongoing debate among users against companies,” said Peter Chow-White, a communications professor at Simon Fraser University.

“There is a certain agreement among users: We’ll give up our data if you give us these free services — although it’s not really free ...”

What sets the B.C. case apart from previous lawsuits is that the complainant isn’t a Gmail user, but rather a correspondent who, by emailing a Gmail user, had his information subjected to data-mining.

“This case shows that even if you don’t participate, your information is still at risk. It can still be mined by Google or other information companies,” said Chow-White. “In terms of information, it’s like the Wild West.”

Gmail had 435 million active users worldwide as of last June, according to Google. That compares with 350 million people who use Hotmail — which Microsoft plans to replace with Outlook.com — and 300 million who use Yahoo Mail.

Google has lots of company in the data-mining business. Just last month in Japan, Yahoo received the go-ahead for its content-based advertising email technology (similar to Gmail) that mines messages to present ads relevant to the user. For example, if a user is emailing all her friends to announce a pregnancy, receivers can expect to see accompanying ads for everything from maternity clothes to bassinets.

While users in Japan shared the concern of users in other parts of the world over giving a company access to their emails, Tatsuo Kawabata, Japan’s minister of internal affairs and communications, has said Yahoo isn’t violating Japan’s Telecommunications Business Law.

Mining users’ content to target them with advertising customized to their interests and profile isn’t new. Google has been doing this for years.

“They are an advertising company. That’s their primary line of business,” said University of B.C. Sauder School of Business professor Marc-David Seidel.

“Google’s primary source of revenue is advertising. What it does very well is it generates traffic that is keyword- or topic-related, and now it is going so far as to be profile-related.”

Users of any Google products — from Gmail to YouTube to Google+, or one of the many other online services and features that come under the Google corporate umbrella — can check their Google dashboard to see just what the company is collecting on them. Google also lists its privacy policy in detail, and makes no secret of the fact that it is scanning users’ emails.

“No, but automatic scanning and filtering technology is at the heart of Gmail,” writes Google. “Gmail scans and processes all messages using fully automated systems in order to do useful and innovative stuff like filter spam, detect viruses and malware, show relevant ads, and develop and deliver new features across your Google experience.”

Personally, I use Google Gmail, Google docs, YouTube, Google+, Chrome and other Google services, so Google has a lot of details on me. When I checked on Thursday, the dashboard was reporting that my sister — complete with name and email address — was my most frequent correspondent, followed by a remote filing email address for The Vancouver Sun. And not only did Google know that I had been using a Samsung Android phone this summer, it also noted the phone’s International Mobile Equipment Identity — the phone’s unique identifier number.

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